Ryu's Secret
by bluemchen6
Summary: Ryu has a secret!


**Ryu's Secret**

Ryu had a secret. A dark, embarrassing secret.

And that secret was the reason he now stood in front of an angry Sawatari in the faculty room glaring at the floor.

Inazuka-sensei was busily rubbing at one of the many food-coloured spots on the Head Teacher's brown suit with a flowered handkerchief; all the while dodging the man's angrily swaying arms that moved emotionally around, stressing his angry words and bad mood.

The other teachers had crowded around the pretty English teacher's desk and watched the scene curiously from the relative safety of the pink decorated sidelines.

The door opened and the chipper voice of Yankumi greeted her colleagues.

Inazuka abandoned his task of rubbing at Sawatari's clothes and pointed an accusing finger at the young teacher: "You .... you ..." his voice overturned at his angry, righteous state of mind: "Your class!" Inazuka gasped. "Again!"

Yankumi's eyes grew wide as she noticed Ryu standing silently in front of the Head Teacher and his self-appointed second in command.

She dropped her teaching papers on the next best desk and pushed through her gawking colleagues to reach her student.

"Odagiri, are you all right?" she asked concerned, leaving the little bald teacher gasping in indignation and Sawatari growling warningly: "Yamaguchi-sensei."

Ryu looked up at her worried tone and met her eyes for a brief moment. He jerked his head once in reassurance and then returned to glaring at the floor.

"What happened?" the pig-tailed teacher asked.

_~One hour earlier~_

It was a bright and sunny day and most of the students had passed their classes by longingly staring out of the windows into the inviting school grounds.

When the lunch bell finally rang, most of Kurogin Gakuen's pupils rushed outside to enjoy their lunch under the blue sky in the sunshine and fresh air; amongst them the two leaders of 3D and their friends.

In search of a nice spot to relax and eat the five boys passed one of the picnic tables dispersed around the school grounds. This particular table had been seized by Head Teacher Sawatari and the Japanese language teacher Inazuka.

Right next to the table Take noticed that his shoelaces had come undone and stopped to retie them. The others stopped to wait for him, Hayato holding Take's book bag, Tsuchi and Hyuga fooling around while Ryu took note of his surroundings in his typically detached manner.

Inazuka was glaring at them, shielding his lunch box protectively as if any moment the students would steal it away. The Head Teacher meanwhile ignored them completely, totally focused on his own lunch box.

"Mmh." He hummed in anticipation as he unpacked plastic box after plastic box. "Sachiko-san makes lunch so rarely, though she's such a good cook."

With near religious devotion he opened one lid after another, uncovering the delicious treats his wife had boxed for him in one of her generous moods.

Rice, makizushi, fried noodles, fish, tofu and soya sauce, pickles, sweet bread...

Sawatari was so immersed in discovering the contents of his lunch box he never saw it coming.

All of a sudden the usually calm and collected Ryu dived forward and with a jerky movement upended the carefully prepared plastic containers, scattering their contents on the table and the Head Teacher.

For a split second everyone seemed frozen in time staring at the mess in shock.

Ryu was the first to move. Unusually pale he made a gurgled noise, turned on his heel and bolted.

"Ryu!!!" his bewildered friends called after him and Sawatari, recovering from his shocked surprise and trembling with anger jumped up and roared: "Odagiri!!!!"

_~Present Time~_

"Why would you do something like that?" Yankumi asked her student, confused.

Ryu didn't answer and continued to drill holes in the floor with his eyes, his hands forming fists at his side.

"Why? You are honestly asking for a reason for 3D acting like delinquents!" Inazuka groused, but ducked behind the Head Teacher cowed by Yankumi's glare.

"I don't care for his reasons." Sawatari growled with a raised voice "This is clearly an affront against school authority and shows a blatant disrespect for us - the teachers, for this school and for all that we stand. This kind of behaviour is unacceptable!"

Sawatari took a few steps closer to Ryu, towering over him and his face very close to the boy he hissed: "By all rights you shouldn't even be here. You are allowed here at school only by the chairmen's and my generosity in the first place. But enough is enough! You will be banned from coming to Kurogin ever again."

Ryu bowed his head lower, the knuckles of his balled fists going white. But there was nothing he could do. He would not – could not – tell his secret to them.

"Kyoto-sensei!" Yankumi called indignant.

"Ryu!" the door to the faculty room burst open and Ryu's friends tumbled in.

"Guys ...!" Yankumi said equally amused and annoyed by her students, who had obviously eavesdropped at the door.

Hayato straightened himself and confidently walked up to Ryu, coming to a stop beside him. The others kept hovering at the door.

"You can't do that." Hayato said furiously, facing Sawatari head on.

"What?" the Head Teacher asked, annoyed by Hayato's interference. "_You_ better keep your feet still, Yabuki. I have no qualms whatsoever to suspend you for insubordination."

Hayato snorted: "Yeah, right."

"Yabuki ..." Yankumi interrupted pleadingly.

Hayato drew himself up, like always when he faced someone down, raising his chin in a challenge: "You can't expel Ryu for something he can't help."

"He can't help dumping Kyoto's food all over him!" Inazuka cried aghast, emerging from behind Sawatari only to duck back right away faced with Hayato's fierce scowl.

Ryu's head had jerked up at Hayato's words, his glare now focused on Hayato instead off the innocent floor.

"Yabuki." Yankumi said "Do you know the reason behind Odagiri's behaviour?"

Hayato nodded.

"Don't you dare tell." Ryu hissed at his friend. "If you breathe even one word, I'm going to kill you."

"You'd rather be expelled from school?" Hayato asked.

"Yes." Ryu pressed out from behind clenched teeth.

"Yabuki." Yankumi grasped the boy's arm. "If you know something, you should tell us."

"There is no way that Odagiri's behaviour could be excused." Sawatari groused. "And I stand by what I said."

"Isn't this a bit harsh?" Shiratori-sensei asked from the sidelines.

"Harsh?" Sawatari asked. "Harsh?

We've been lenient for too long, if the pupils think they can get away with throwing food at their teachers. We have to remain firm and get rid of the trash or they'll pull the others down with them!"

"Kyoto!" Yankumi called out warningly, strengthening her grip on Hayato's arm, who made a move as if to lunge himself at the Head Teacher.

"Damn you!" Hayato yelled at Sawatari's face "Ryu can't help it! It's not his fault that he has pickle-phobia!"

All people in the faculty room stood and sat frozen, thunderstruck by Hayato's proclamation. Only Yankumi remained able to act and intercept Ryu, who tried to pounce on Hayato to strangle the boy.

After a few moments of utter silence, only disturbed by Ryu struggling against Yankumi's grip to get to Hayato, Hyuga asked his friends, standing with him by the door, in an audible whisper: "What's a pickle-phobia?"

Tsuchiya blinked and looked at Hyuga: "That means Ryu is afraid of ..."

"...pickles?" breathed Take incredulous.

As Ryu heard this he slumped against Yankumi, who stumbled at the sudden shift of his weight, but managed to keep them both upright.

But Ryu didn't care. His shameful secret was exposed and nothing that he said could undo it. His reaction to Hayato's revelation had been too conclusive to deny it.

Sawatari's eyes were bulging unpleasantly as he stared at the dejected boy, hanging from his homeroom teacher's shoulder. "That can't be true ..." he said even as he knew that this kind of excuse was too farfetched to be made-up.

Hayato peered apologetic at Ryu as he addressed the Head Teacher, without his usual boisterous tones, but in a very matter-of-fact way: "It's true; when Ryu sees pickles he loses every reason. He just wanted to get rid of the pickles and when he went for them he over-turned the rest of the dishes by accident. There were no bad intentions behind Ryu's actions."

"How can someone have a pickle-phobia?" asked Inazuka "I have never heard of something like this! This is ridiculous!"

Ryu groaned and hid his face in Yankumi's shoulder, who patted him comfortingly. But Ryu was beyond caring about the embarrassing position. He just wanted to vanish from the face of the earth.

Shiratori spoke up with her faint girlish voice: "But is that not the definition of phobia? That it is an unreasonable fear of something and causes the excessive desire to avoid the feared object?"

Hayato smiled gratefully at the young English teacher who tittered in response.

"But why pickles?" asked Hyuga who still couldn't wrap his mind around the concept of Ryu, who could face down Hayato without batting an eyelash, being afraid of food.

"When Ryu was three or four years old, he had to watch how his nanny nearly choked to death on a pickle. Since then he has such an adversary reaction to them." Hayato explained.

Shiratori sighed audibly: "Poor thing."

Yankumi fixed the Head Teacher with her unrelenting stare: "Well, Kyoto. You can't honestly punish Odagiri for being afraid of pickles."

Sawatari grimaced and grudgingly agreed: "I guess not."

"Great!" Yankumi beamed "Well, with everything cleared up now, you guys can go back to class." And she quickly herded her pupils out of the faculty room, before Sawatari could change his mind.

In the end Ryu was glad that Hayato forced his secret out in the open, so he could stay at Kurogin Gakuen and with his friends.

The teachers probably had a good laugh on his expense, but they never said anything to reveal his secret to his fellow students. They even seemed to regard him as a little more human then they had before.

And no one in 3D dared to question what had happened in the faculty room, only silently wondering about the origins of Hayato's black eye.

_~End~_


End file.
